Doc Democracy

I do have to disagree again. Fantasy HERO is absolutely neutral as to the kind of magic system you decide to use in your game. If Vancian style magic is what turns you on, then do it. If it is a poor deal for players, they will not pay the points for it and magic will be rare. As for free kit, I saw nothing in the original post that magic would be incompatible with weapons and armour... of course, a true wizard may disdain physical power but that was not part of the costings folk were talking about. what you might get is fighter types that know a few charms rather than full-on wizards, more like fafhrd and the grey mouser. Not a terrible outcome...

If you had a power (or powers) generating LTE, then you would have to track it during a fight as it would inexorably reduce the END you had to play with during the fight... I thought 1st edition Fantasy Hero was quite innovative in the way it disincentivised heavy armour by causing LTE.

One END pool means that everything comes from the same place and one kind of powers tires him out more than the others. If the tiring powers are cool there is the temptation to use them despite the fact that it reduces the ability to use the fire powers later - there is a dynamic that is not present when you have two pools. My problem with 2 END pools is that the RAW way to do that is to spend points on them. He is then spending points for a worse outcome. It might actually be simpler to persuade the GM to rule the electricity powers use Long Term Endurance rather than normal END, as GM, for no cost, I would allow a reduced amount of LTE than normal or for a limitation the same END but Long Term recovery. Doc

D'oh! I meant decrease, obviously!!! ? Take ComplexRECMan, he has an END of 40 and fire powers that cost 3 END and electricity powers that cost 3 END but have a side effect that drains 3 END (standard effect). If CRM uses his fire powers he now has an END of 37 that recovers normally. If he uses the electricity powers he now has an END of 34, three of which recovers normally and 3 which may recover in minutes or hours depending on the purchase. If you wanted that to be even except for the recovery, then you would have to have Reduced END advantage for the electricity powers which increase their cost - even if that balanced out you are spending the same for a worse outcome. You might persuade the GM to allow you to take a delayed recovery END drain instead of normal END for a negotiated limitation (it is good practice to use a mechanic already in the game than dream up a new one). I might go for that as a GM, somewhere from +1/4 to +1/2 depending on the delayed rate. Maybe more if I thought this really had a big impact - it will impact the use of fire powers as well, as the END available shrinks... Doc

Endurance Reserves are often a decent solution bureaucracy wise but I have issues with spending points to limit a character.... ....I do like the drain idea as a side effect (though that does have an issue with increasing the amount of END practically available, no?)

well. You are asking for bureaucracy in your life. What kind of delay are you thinking about? I might simply go for END used from electricity based powers takes x? longer to recover. What you then need to do is record your values and decide with the GM how this is going to work. If you have 40 END, 6 END and electricity takes twice as long to recover, consider the following. You have used 7 END for fire and 7 END for electricity? You might decide that REC is split between the columns and the electricity column gets to recover once in every two recoveries. So in the first REC you drop the fire END used to 4, electricity REC remains at 7. Next recovery fire goes to 1, electricity goes to 4. The next recovery is more interesting. You only have one END to recover in the fire column and you would not expect the electricity column to recover this round. You might decide to come up with some kind of complex solution but I would stick with simple when there are two kinds of END to recover. If there is only electricity END to recover, you recover 3 END (1/2 your REC per recovery). The value of the limitation on the electricity powers would have to be negotiated with your GM. If the character relies on the electricity powers then it is likely to be a higher limitation than if they are supplementary to your core powers. Doc

I think conversion is difficult, especially so when the systems have, on the surface, so many similarities. It is easy for assumptions to be made that things equate when they do not really. It is almost easier when the systems are widely divergent and then how certain things are done can be explained. When it comes to characters, I think it is often better to take a character from the original system, strip out every mechanical reference that you can, leaving a highly descriptive version of the character and then apply the new system using that description. It is likely to surprise you how doing that makes better use of the new system than looking to go direct from system to system. Doc

I think that comes into the GM style. It almost has to be shown early on that if the players screw up (not usually the dice unless they are only being rolled due to bad decisions) then someone is likely to die. When my players decide that they are going to embark on a headlong assault on a hard point that I have demonstrated by wasting countless NPC lives to be deadly, then they accept they are now in life or death dice rolling. If one of them dies in this, I am pretty unsympathetic. If they had sought another way round the hard-point, trying to think but it all goes wrong due to issues they had no way of knowing about, I am more likely to seek to transform death into capture or severe disadvantage (loss of equipment, disabling wounds etc). It is almost impossible for the game to be both deadly and forgiving. Gamers will game. If the system has built in mechanisms to escape death, gamers will not keep them for special situations, they will consider them as part of the tactical landscape. (I am not using gamers pejoratively here, just saying we are playing a game and players will often look to play optimally, even when making bad strategic decisions). Doc

I am the big block to my group playing Cthulhu, I hate the genre with a passion(and more broadly to horror based games). I would not stop the group playing but I will usually find an excuse not to participate when that kind of game is on the table. I do however support disposable character style games (as long as we are up front about it). In several games we played, including a dystopian superhero game, the idea was to work towards a satisfying death scene. We had several excellent games that resulted in near TPKs where the dead characters players were happier than the ones that survived. Champions, Pendragon, D6 Star Wars and Spacemaster all featured games where I grew and sacrificed a character in a most satisfactory way. ? Doc

It has a lot of poor reviews, I think it will depend on what you want to use it for. It looks as though it works better as a supplement than as a replacement by the looks of it.

There is a fantastic mechanic in FFG Star Wars called the destiny pool. Instead of everyone having individual fate points or power points, there is a shared pool with a fixed number of points. If it is set up with six points, three of them are dark, three of them are light. At any time the players or GM can use a destiny point to improve a roll, add something to the story etc, just like most of these mechanics. The twist is that when you use a destiny point as a player one of the White points turns black. The GM can use them to alter dice rolls etc and that changes a dark point white but can also turn them over when the players achieve things, act heroically etc. it is surprisingly effective especially when the GM constantly tempts you with what he will offer IF you want to spend a destiny point...the slow turn of white to dark actually ramps up the tension and there is a dynamic early in the game where the players are casual about using the points but really try to get it all or mostly white by the end, when things are heading to a climax. Doc

Another 4 people, have made you GMs so that you can see everything in there.

Iena There are, as typical in HERO, a lot of ways to implement this kind of stuff. It is for you to sort it out and write it up. One example, and I stress that, for limiting the points ploughed into Magic Skill might be to implement a system in the game world where folk are inducted into magical colleges, master to apprentice, overseen by one (or many) magical college. The induction into the arts means that the apprentice must satisfy in-game requirements as well as spending character points for skill levels. This would show that the apprentice is delving into the mysteries, one after another. You might do that in-game with a series of quests that the wizard must undertake (and persuade his fellows to do them when other, more lucrative opportunities abound) or you might do it by putting pre-requisites on levels on the Magic Skill such as needing 14- in Arcane Mythic Writing before you can purchase +1 in Magic. A series of pre-requisites means that the player needs to spend a lot of points broadening out the magician to increase his game effectiveness (though those broad skills should be drawn out by the GM to make the points spent worthwhile). As for limiting the number of spells, that is really all in how the spells are drawn up. I will provide one possibility. You can put a prerequisite that a spell must be memorised through evening or morning study to before it can be used. You can provide the magician with a free END reserve (I personally dont like charging characters for things that limit them) with a set amount of END within it that recharges once per day (but only if the character gets a good night's rest). The player can then decide which spells he wishes to memorise, up to the limit of the END in the reserve. The spells should be bought such that they can only be used with END from the reserve, not personal END from the character. You can use this kind of thing to beef up the drama too. A wizard "might" be able to push END into the reserve by spending BODY, again if you decide to build it that way. Though I would make this a side effect of BODY drain where the recovery of that BODY is hugely delayed - to ensure it cannot simply be fixed by a judicious healing spell. Everything is possible if you think hard enough about how you want the mechanics to work. Do the thinking, use D&D as the basis and then think of all the things you wished had been included in that system and you can bake them into yours. When you have the detail, come back and people here will give you at least one, if not more, way to get what you want from your magic system. Doc PS: your English is INFINITELY better than my Italian, kudos.

My most obvious issue with this "problem" in players was playing Pedragon. The characters have a whole set of sliding characteristics, like a slider between Brave and Cowardly. If Brave is 15, Cowardly is 5 - always adding up to 20. In a situation where the scene demands the player be brave (not every scene, you would not use it in a situation where you might expect a knight to be brave, like charging into battle) then you need to roll your brave. You need to roll under the Brave stat to be brave. If you fail, you see if you roll under Cowardly, when your action needs to be cowardly. If both are failed, the knight cannot be brave but does not have to be cowardly. The stats change during the game, knights are expected to become more knightly as they gain in experience. I thought it was ingenious when I first played but so many of my friends hated the dice telling them they had to be cowardly... Doc (I put problem in quote marks because it is only a problem when the expectation differ in the group, most especially between the GM and the players. If everyone is on the same page and it is all game efficiency and numbers, then great, no-one should be told they are having BadWrongFun)

I do think horror is possibly the most difficult genre to get right. The players do absolutely have to buy into the game, setting aside the knowledge they are in a horror story, setting aside any notions of fairness, understanding they will often lose Wendy as players as their characters react in ways that are less than optimal. it is possibly the last one that causes most issues. Most players I have encountered hate the idea that the character might limit the player in what actions might be taken, detest being captured and often feel that while they should be able to use intimidate to make NOCs cough up information, that an NPC should not be able to do the same to a PC. Doc

I think most things are covered by the rules, just that some are better (or more easily) simulated than others... ?

For the benefit of those of us that have not read the Apocalypse Troll, could you elaborate on what the symbiote can do, the constraints and the potential downside of the symbiote. If you want regeneration to act slowly, then Norm has given you a great start on a range of powers that you might want in a suite of things. The side effects that are in Norm's description are I think meant to reflect some of the impacts of the symbiote but, from a quick reading, I cannot parse the side effect of the toughened BODY, difficult to see when the BODY would stop being used and the character emerge from the death-like sleep and not sure I agree that it is all side effect etc. All good grist for the mill though.

I think that there is a case for some of these things allowing a base 11 or less chance as a skill that can be supplemented by combat levels or additional points in acting, whichever is lower...So someone highly skilled in swordfighting with some acting ability gets to use their acting ability and someone with good acting ability and some combat skills gets to use their combat skills... :-) I think I am less simulationist than many - my aim is to provide decent game mechanics to enhance the gameplay. As such, I am less concerned what niche knowledge of things are and cater more to how most people think such things should work. It may be that a neophyte may not respond in the way someone properly trained would but I think that a highly skilled opponent would be able to quickly read an unskilled, but naturally talented opponent and be able to lead them into poor choices of attack. That to me is what feint is all about, leading your opponent into making sub-optimal choices that opens them up to attacks or making them easier to defeat. There are a number of ways you might do this, with varying degrees of impact on gameplay... Doc

I think feinting would be the preserve of the highly skilled tackling opponents that were not as skilled and relied on natural talents to make up the difference.

I also think that there should be some risk in a feint. I do not think that you should waste an action feinting. You should make the roll to feint, if you succeed then you can make an attack with a reduced OCV or damage in that same action, this is the action that draws whatever you want the opponent to do. If you fail the feint then you have left yourself open, suffer the same OCV or damage penalties and incur DCV penalties on top...

It could be looked at with that in mind. If someone is good enough to feint, it encourages their opponent to do exactly the wrong thing. It is possible to write that in HERO in a number of ways. You can presume that the feint is successful and simply give the attacker additional OCV, damage or both or you can have the OCV and/or damage be dependent on an additional roll. I think the problem, as described, is that, if the target knows that his opponent's OCV is raised on the next action, then they may be entirely able to negate that advantage by dodging (aborting to that dodge if necessary). If you had properly been feinted then you would not be thinking of dodging, you would be committed to whatever action your opponent fooled you into pursuing. There is the potential for the GM managing this but that has the potential for a lot of arguing that "I was going to do that anyway"... I think that, instead of providing a bonus to damage or OCV, the person who succeeds in a feint should be able to dictate what his opponent's next manouevre should be. Before committing to that manouevre on their next action, the target should get a chance to see the trap (some kind of INT versus feint roll) as a last chance of not doing what the opponent wants you to do. I do not think it should be easy to feint but if you do, it should not be easy to spot the trap set for you. Doc

What is the ghost going to provide. There are all kinds of things you might do. What I might do is create the ghost by generating a naked power, clairsentience, usable by others, requires a roll (conversation), physical manifestation. That generates a thing that you need to engage in conversation to get information about something. You could quite easily build the ghost to do lots of things that are represented by powers...

I think it is all a matter of perception - you do not lose your SPD or your ability to act more often. You do not lose your ability to utilise that CV if you want. I see no actual difference - the ones I dont see being voluntarily lowered are STUN, BODY and END...

Not sure I follow that reasoning Christopher. I choose not to act as often as I might I choose not to act as forcefully as I might I choose not to act as quickly as I might I choose not to think as hard on a problem as I might I choose not to look to closely as I might I choose not to avoid your attack as much as I might As far as accepting an illusion, it would all come down to the trust between the individuals. Does the flashed PC trust the mentalist enough to accept his view of the world enough to take action based on it. It is like the falling down test - do you trust your colleague to catch you? If you trust enough, then you will not seek to break out of it. I would make some kind of a roll if the flashed person is hit by someone or falls over something they cannot see (the illusion is deficient) to maintain that trust.

So, if I am getting this right, your character is suddenly going to start finding it more tiring to alter the uses he puts his claws to. He will now need to put some effort into switching from rend and tear to draining mystical defences but the use of the powers will remain unchanged. you will be proposing this to your GM as a way of reducing the cost of the multipower to free up points to spend elsewhere. Is that right? As GM, I think I would look carefully at how your END expenditure has been. Are you often close to 0 END and so this limitation would cause you difficulties? If not, you might be sending a message that this is something that needs to be brought into the game. If you are getting points for it, the GM is invited to make it an issue and problematic. This is especially the case when revising a character rather than building from scratch, or at least I know as a GM I am more aware and alert to such things than right at the start when everyone is in design mode. Doc